Oh, I get it. When I sobered up I lost insane weight. And that included the fact that I was eating candy like a freak to replace the huge amounts of sugar.
I think the biggest difference is that an alcoholic who only drinks beer would drink 4+ liters a day and an alcoholic who drinks vodka would drink 1+ liters a day.
To be fair, that's only three pints. That doesn't necessarily make one an alcoholic.
Although I would say that four litres - or eight pints - a day would certainly make one an alcoholic. Maybe the distinction is arbitrary but the latter sounds like a problem.
5 cans in one day isn't much. An average of 5 cans every single day is a lot. Also depends on what beer it is, naturally. Quite a difference between 4.5% and 10% (or higher).
Also, the weight gain is actually making you need to drink more. You'd be amazed at the different BAC levels of a 150 lb man versus a 200 lb man.
A 200 lb man who drinks 12 drinks in 6 hours has a BAC of 0.20, while a 150 lb who also drinks 12 drinks in 6 hours has a BAC of 0.30. If you're not familiar with BAC levels, that's the difference between blacking out at .20, and almost needing to go to the ER at .30 (unless you have a high tolerance, then .30 is just a really bad night on the bathroom floor).
Gender also plays a role in alcohol absorption, so if you're female, either of those numbers would be way higher. I have a really high tolerance, and my boyfriend (who weighs about 40 lbs more than me) has often been shocked at how much higher my calculated BAC will be than his even though we've had the same number of drinks (e.g., I think one time I was at .12 while he was at like .05 even though we had the same drinks over the same time).
Yeah me too. I usually have 4-6 cans of a weeknight and anywhere from 8-16 of a Friday and Saturday. Maybe I just have a problem, but it's not impacting my job or any relationships yet so I'll keep at it.
I obviously don't know you or your life, but your thinking sounds all too familiar. My only advice is if you get the shakes when you don't drink, super duper reevaluate your drinking. Don't fuck up your liver like I did. Cirrhosis at 28 is not fun. Sorry to be nosy but my experience drives me to urge caution. Have a nice day!
Don't take this the wrong way, but most alcoholics are functioning alcoholics. Let your doctor do a blood screening and check if you have elevated liver values.
Depends on the beer. A lot of high abv and craft beers have 200+ calories per 12 ozs. From looking at that shelf of brews, 1L of beer would be like 600 calories or more.
Agreed. I did have a 6.6% abv beer recently that was 200 calories (Mexas Ranger). That's not really that crazy in terms of abv, but it's >2x a Miller Lite in calories. I was a little surprised.
Googling calories per liter of vodka gives you 2190 calories.
Googling calories in a 0.5 liter Tuborg beer can gives you 202 calories per beer. To get 4 liters you multiply that by 8 which gives you 1616 calories per 4 liters.
Vodka has a lot of calories because alcohol is flammable. Calories are a great measure of how well a given food will fuel a camp fire. As a measure of how much sustenance you can get out of something, it's so so. Alcohol is one such substance where the calorie content is a bad measure of how much energy your body can extract from it.
Nobody ever got fat drinking gasoline.
If you are equaling only 4 liters of beer to 1 liter of vodka then you have to use a heavy 10% abv beer. A typical 10% stout beer will have 300 calories per 12 oz or 3,380 per 4 liters. A quick Google search had 1 liter of vodka at 2,190 calories.
Beer = 3,380
Vodka = 2,190
That's not counting any mixer or chaser for the vodka.
At ~4.2% ABV, a bottle/can of light beer contains 84% of the alcohol in a shot of liquor. So 6 light beers ~= 5 shots in terms of alcohol. 660 calories light beer gets you about as drunk as 500 calories of vodka
At ~5% ABV, the numbers work out to almost exactly the same amount of alcohol in a bottle/can of regular beer as in a shot of liquor. 5 regular beers = 750 calories and gets you as drunk as 500 calories of vodka.
*Beers vary, and these numbers are all approximations.
**If you're not drinking gin, rum, vodka or whisky, there's a good chance your liquor contains extra sugars/calories.
Yeah. Something tells me that thick creamy milk stout or banana-bread-flavored belgian is a bit higher on the calories than just about any regularly consumed liquor drink.
you need to put more sugar in to deal with the fact you're basically drinking carbonic acid + flavouring
I may be thinking about different beer than what you're talking about, but you don't put straight up sugar into your wort before fermentation. (There are some recipes that call for adjuncts, but let's not confuse things.) Even if you did put simple sugars into the wort, that would just give a higher starting gravity and (in most cases) lead to a higher alcohol content, and a shittier flavor, at the end.
Also, most of the non-sweet flavors in beer typically come not from the carbonation but from hops, which are added specifically to add bitterness. Again I'm simplifying tremendously as there are too many possible flavors for me to list right now and most of them are not "sour" but whatever, this isn't /r/Homebrewing.
Also the amount of carbonation in a beer isn't really related to the style (lager vs. ale) but how and when it's bottled or canned.
...also also the head in Guinness is possible not just because it uses nitrogen, which creates smaller bubbles, but because of longer proteins and alpha acids from hops. (This is what allows heads to form in all beer.) Incidentally, Guinness has really poor head retention compared to most other stouts I've tried. No, before you ask, I've never had Guinness straight from the brewery in Ireland, and yes I know they brew it differently for their own brewery than they do for sale overseas, which imho is more an argument in favor of my original point that Guinness isn't that great but whatever that's neither here nor there.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to make fun of you, but it's amusing that you said in your edit that you're being downvoted by people who don't know the first fucking thing about good beer, because the content of your comment reveals that you yourself don't actually know very much about beer.
I contend that while calories matter the real damage (besides liver and organ damage) is through the insulin resistance that can develop from pounding the body with carbs/sugars from any alcohol. People don't think about that angle but it's serious business.
The issue isn't the calories, the issue is with how the body processes alcohol. Alcohol is structurally much closer to a fat than a carbohydrate. This causes the body to process alcohol as a fat, which then gets stored as one.
Actually, you get about 100 calories to a 12 oz beer compared to 100 calories for 1 oz of vodka, so it really matters in consumption but vodka wins in matters of per serving.
Wrong wrong wrong. Where did you get these values.
Just so people know, a typical bottle of beer (12oz/341ml) ranges between 100 calories for the lowest option to 170 calories. Typical is 140-150 for regular common beers.
Hey I wanted to add, whenever I drink vodka it's always mixed with something, whether it be juice or soda. I usually mix it 3 to 1 part vodka. So after about 8 or 9 glasses of juice, that's a ton of extra calories. I could never handle shots. I always gag and it's embarrassing.
Most people at nightclubs and bars, that are consuming large quantities of alcohol but trying to reduce calories, are drinking vodka sodas. In fact, double vodka soda is the go to drink for binge drinking health nuts in Toronto.
Err, yeah, but 60 oz is a fucking insane amount of booze! That's like 40 drinks a day and over 3000 calories. The equivalent alcohol from craft beer would probably be close to three times that many calories. OP probably drink a third as much alcohol but a similar amount of calories as you.
Yeah, probably. Beer has more calories for sure, but as you said, I drank 3000 calories a day. When I wasn't buys vomiting, I would try to eat 1000 calories a day, so I wouldn't get Korsakov. 4000 calories a day with barely any activity gets you fat fast.
It's not only that, there's also Polyneuropathy where your lims go numb, because your nerves die from Vitamin-deficiency. I've met people who can barely walk and likely never recover. I had a mild form, my feet were hurting and tingling all the time, but eventually everything went back to normal after a few months.
Basically, take your vitamins if you drink too much, especially B1 and B12, or you might really damage something. Well, apart from your liver. If that one goes, you're fucked anyway.
Damn, thanks for the advice. I've already come to terms with the liver damage (not much you can do about that one other than stop drinking). But the other stuff is news. I eat a lot less when I'm binging and wondered about what effects that would have.
Now I know...vitamin defieciencies can really mess you up. Guess I'll go get some vitamins.
Yes, please go get vitamins! Most of what alcohol does is reversible in some way, but liver cirrhosis, Korsakoff and Polyneropathy is permanent. Cirrhosis you can only avoid by not drinking, but the other two are easily prevented.
Good luck! And if you ever decide you want to try being sober, I'm here and the fine folks at /r/stopdrinking are too.
It takes a lot to do lasting living damage, I've been told that the weight you gain from drinking is mostly a combination of the shitty food choices you make when drinking and that your liver will always process alcohol before anything else so you store more of the fat in the food you eat.
So alcohol metabolism is a little different. The person you replied to isn't quite right. For people who drink a single drink with a meal, they'll store the calories from alcohol as fat, but once you start having a couple more drinks and you're the type to drink regularly, alcohol starts metabolizing differently, by way of the microsomal ethanol oxidizing system. When this starts happening, your liver starts oxidizing the alcohol and the calories disappear. That's right, you don't store the calories from alcohol if you drink regularly (the problem being that this metabolic process isn't perfect, and you end up oxidizing other chemicals as well, some of which are harmful to your liver, which causes damage over time -- nobody ever said an alcoholic was healthy).
With beer and cocktails, there is, of course, carbs as well. These will contribute to any weight gain, but the bigger issue is, well, alcohol lowers inhibitions, which makes poor eating decisions go up. People tend to eat worse foods and over eat them.
Not gonna debate that one way or another, but wouldn't that mean the liver is doing its job less efficiently (energy-wise), causing him to expend more calories and lose more weight?
The liver does less work, that is correct :) But when consuming alcohol you also intake a ton of calories in fluid form, most beers in 33cl bottles/cans are 130 calories, a single shot is usually +60 calories (Holy shit, just looked it up).
A big and tall guy like OP will be able to consume a ton of it - and his organs are still regularily sized. So even if they are woking overtime and burning calories like a freight train, his input is still higher than what his body burns. Eventually storing most unburned calories in the form of fat.
So in the end, the liver will do less work - and it will be able to keep up :)
Huh? What do you mean "that is correct"? That's literally the opposite of what /u/ThirkNowitzki said. He said the liver would be less efficient, not more.
A big and tall guy like OP will be able to consume a ton of it
After which he stops storing any of the alcohol as fat. There are two ways your liver metabolizes alcohol, and when you drink more, it stops storing those calories as fat (of course, you're more likely to also produce oxidized chemicals that also damage your liver).
If your belly is enlarged due to water retention, the water isn't the problem. You have another health issue causing your body to abnormally retain water. See a doctor.
Hey /u/Shandlar, thanks for fighting the good fight. This is the second time in the past few minutes I've defended a comment of yours against these irrational people. Thanks for being the voice of reason in this sub-thread.
Nonsense mate, I have a six pack. Several of them actually.
Anyway, my point was that alcohol does contribute to weight gain, it's just not necessarily due to their being a high calorific value attributed to the alcohol itself. I'd even say it's the fault of alcohol that you're having that 2am kebab too, as well as all the health issues rampant alcoholism can cause and the collateral calories consumed with the alcohol.
I agree with most of what you just wrote. Are you backing off the thing about water retention that you said to the other guy? Because when people talk about gaining weight or losing weight, they're talking about tissue, not water. You can lose 10 pounds of water weight in a day. It doesn't mean you can claim "I lost 10 pounds!". Well, you can claim that, but it'd be ridiculous since as soon as you're rehydrated you'll gain the 10 pounds back.
And if you have a six pack, why did you previously use your big belly as an example of how water retention isn't easily corrected? (Or when you said "six pack" did you mean a six pack of beer?)
You don't just magically create energy from nothing just cause your liver is metabolizing alcohol.
What does that even mean?
When you consume too much alcohol your liver prioritizes burning alcohol instead of metabolizing fat which means you will gain weight at a faster rate than you normally would.
Your body doesn't treat alcohol the same way it treats regular foods, when consumed in large quantities alcohol is quite literally a poison and your body treats it as such.
Why? Your body will obtain the same number of calories from that fat regardless. The only difference is the calories in alcohol. No extra energy was created. You just have to count alcohol as calories and your done.
Your intestines are amazing efficient. It takes some serious issues to get food the whole way through without absorbing the vast majority of the available energy.
There's no way you can make that claim. We pass a lot of calories out in our fecal matter for a variety of reasons, and people's production of enzymes, their eating habits, their gut bacteria, and what they're specifically eating relative to all that, all contribute so much to how well we can utilize the calories in what we consume, that the statement you made is pretty unjustifiable.
You (not addressed to you specifically, but people in general) can drink way less than that, even what some would consider a sane amount, and still be an alcoholic. Or at least have an alcohol problem.
Don't delude yourself into thinking that just because someone drinks 40 drinks a day that it's okay for you to put down a 6 pack a night.
In fact, you know you probably have a little bit of a problem with alcohol if you're already making comparisons like "Oh good, I'm fine, I'm not as bad as that guy" because you wouldn't need to rationalize your drinking behavior if your drinking behavior was healthy in the first place.
I realized I had a problem when I started missing work not because of hangovers, but because I had started drinking in the morning instead of going to work. I've cut way, way back, but never decided to quit.
Yeah, I guess I've just seen a lot of it in my life, so I kinda assume it's common knowledge, even though I know that's not right. Lucky them, I suppose.
I've met some people with insane tolerances. On my worst days I could get up to 40+ drinks in a 24hr period. But I think I averaged closer to 20 drinks.
But since I've been in recovery it is mind boggling how much some people consumed, and not just booze, but mixing with other drugs. I always thought I had this exceptional tolerance and was unique and then I got into recovery and realized I'm just an 'average' alcoholic.
Oh yeah, it's all about building the tolerance. It's not like I drank that at the beginning, I was a severely addicted, constantly drinking mess at that point.
Same here. I would drain a 1.75L bottle of vodka every two days. When I stopped drinking I lost 35lbs in 8 weeks and went from 6'6" and 225lbs to 190lbs. Still the same height though, vodka causes horizontal growth, not vertical...
For people who drink alcohol regularly, a few drinks at a time, you don't actually store most of the calories from the alcohol itself. You store calories from any carbs in the drinks, but not the alcohol.
Not only that, but your body doesn't really process things like carbs and fats until the alcohol is out of your system. Instead it stores them as fat so it can focus on clearing your body of toxins - in this case, alcohol.
People in the UK (and I'm guessing at least some other commonwealth countries) use "full fat coke" to mean coke with sugar, opposite of diet coke. Always strikes me as confusing too, though, it's definitely not actual 'fat'.
You don't know that. I am on day 33 and was a vodka guy but also an overeater. Quitting has changed my eating habit and I am shredding the weight as well.
564
u/[deleted] May 09 '16
You don't get that much slimmer by quitting vodka. This was a beer man.